“In the theater, I like to share a unique and instantaneous moment with the public,” confides to AFP the actress Camille Cottin, who returns to the stage in a single on stage telling the unusual story of a young German woman. wishing to have a circumcised penis transplanted.
“The meeting”, adaptation of the successful novel The Jewish cock (2021) by the German Katharina Volckmer, translated in around fifteen countries, is playing at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris until January 25, then will be on tour in around twenty cities until April.
Known for her character “Conasse” or her role as artistic agent in the internationally successful series “Ten Percent”, the actress walks, here, on a small mound of purple fabric and around a curtain of the same color. Play partners in which she hides, sinks, drapes herself, takes refuge.
To not miss any of the news,
receive the Daily Headline on your email
By registering, you agree to the terms of use
Dressed in khaki Bermuda shorts and a bomber jacket over a red latex suit, she speaks out loud her confidences to her Jewish gynecologist, Dr. Seligman, whose voice we only hear. She tells him about her discomfort at being a “boy stuck in a girl’s body”, her relationship to love, to God, her absurd Hitler dreams, or even the guilt felt for the Nazi past of previous generations.
Why did you want to adapt this novel for the theater?
“I wanted to share this very unique text. I was very sensitive to the energy, to the sometimes crude literary style, to the poetry that it exudes. […] But also to all the questions it raises, the injunctions, the framework, the desire for emancipation, its feminist dimension as well.
The way in which Katharina Volckmer explores this body, in perpetual transformation, in all its dimensions, also touched me a lot: the body of the child, the body of the adolescent, the sexual body, the body as a political object, the female body, the body as Nation.
She uses humor as a form of resistance, which emerges to break taboos, to counter reality, in a form of acceptance.
At the beginning, I had absolutely no idea how to interpret this character – I was even a little worried about being alone on stage – but I was quite certain that the desire to adapt this novel to the theater would be accompanied by a desire to recreate a universe, a body in movement. I went to get Jonathan Capdevielle [metteur en scène de la pièce, artiste associé au Théâtre de Gennevilliers] whose dreamlike universe carries all these dimensions. »
In this text, the weight of Germany’s Nazi past is also omnipresent…
“I liked the extent to which our contemporary societies resonate with past societies and the difficulty they have in freeing themselves from them. And to what extent it infuses, in a permanent way, both in the intimate and in the collective. »
It’s been six years since you played in the theater, your first love as an actress. What do you feel?
“It makes me very happy. I love movie sets. But, theater is the pleasure of sharing a unique and instantaneous moment with the audience, it’s immense and it’s an exclusive sensation.
I really like the engagement of the body that theater calls for since, there, we are not seen through the prism of a camera, of an angle, of a look, of a frame. We are all on stage and we share an entirely collective experience, which involves the whole body. »
What are your plans for the future?
“Three films in which I act will be released this year, ‘Rembrandt’ (Pierre Schoeller), a feature film by director Tamara Stepanyan and ‘The Children Are Fine’ by Nathan Ambrosioni.
I hope there will be other theatrical adventures. I love cinema and theater. If I can have the chance to continue doing both, I will do so with great joy. »
What is the status of the project to adapt the “Ten percent” series to the United States, “Call my agent”?
“It’s under development. This has not yet materialized. »
